the craggy hole.

a few years ago i felt generally bored and stuck in my life. i was living in san francisco; single, sober, at the same job i had been working for 10 years. i decided to quit my job and jump into the great unknown. what followed was a lot of wandering and aimlessness. i had the best few months of my life on road trips, seeing the country, living in the desert, volunteering, meditating, cooking, walking, running, doing yoga, taking pictures, and writing. lots of writing. but eventually the boredom or restlessness caught up to me. it is extremely difficult for me to not work. i feel i have no ground to stand on, no center to my life. i thought that having a child would change that. i guess that i am surprised to find that it didn’t, and i feel incredibly guilty about that. it’s not that he is not enough. it’s not that my family is not enough. i recognize every single day how lucky i am to have them. i truly do. but still.

the last few months i have felt a little out of control with shopping. obsessing over rugs, pretty clogs, wedding dresses, on and on. it seems like there is some sort of self-destructive element to it. i am living off of my savings right now, and it is no time to be re-furnishing my house or my closet. i feel a sort of emptiness that i seem to be trying to fill up with things. this is familiar to me, something i have done in the past with alcohol and with food (or lack of food), even with men. it seems to follow me, the restless or emptiness and the need to fill it.

i recently started reading geneen roth’s lost and found again. i read it when it first came out, but it maybe was not the time for me. it’s really hitting home right now. i think what i relate to most is the feeling of lack and the fear. the fear that i have to do, see, eat, drink, take everything i possibly can with such immediacy. the hole that never gets filled. my mind and heart know that i have more than enough, everything in the world really. but the hole is always there. it seems impossible for me to be where i am. i live constantly in regret for what i have left behind (even though i was not happy when i had it) and always afraid that i have blown it, missed my chance or lost out on happiness somehow. even though i can recall my unhappiness with that certain thing, still i worry it was really the best thing in the world and i just couldn’t see it because i am so deeply flawed.

i guess the question is, when nothing fills that hole, not food or love or money or pretty shoes, what is it going to take? to finally be okay in the moment. to finally stop trying to gobble everything up or to let go of what is gone. i don’t have the answer. i wish that i did, but i don’t.